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Give Yourself Permission to Feel Your Feelings: Part 1 of 2

We all experience different versions of pain in our lives. Whether it is the pain that comes from a broken relationship with a friend or family member, the ex for whom we still long, the death of a loved one, or the physical pain of trauma, illness, and disease, negative feelings are a natural part of life.

While we do not always get to choose the particular painful experiences we have, HOW we manage these situations is a choice. Perhaps this is the meaning of the saying, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”

Most of us tend to deal with pain primarily with our minds. The mind’s typical response when faced with pain is to immediately focus on fixing the problem. When we do this, we use our energy to resist the unpleasant thoughts, feelings and sensations of grief, hostility, frustration, anxiety, depression, guilt, and resentment that naturally accompany painful situations. What we resist persists, so many times our attempts to bypass the feelings that we are having will actually intensify the pain. This is because we have overlooked an extremely important step in our healing process – we need to FEEL our emotions with our hearts before we can effectively deal with them on a mental level.

Simply stated, when we avoid expressing our feelings, we are not honoring our Whole Self – body, mind, and soul. Our bodies physically register the ease and dis-ease within our lives in a very apparent way. Feelings are energy, and energy is constant movement. Therefore, if we do not EXpress our negative feelings, the energy of pain will IMpress itself into some part of our bodies. For example, if you continue to stuff feelings of being heartbroken, you may eventually develop a heart disease. If you take on other people’s burdens without appropriately expressing your own feelings, you may constantly have pain in your shoulders.

Repressing our feelings also has a negative impact on our minds. Without a constructive outlet to express our feelings, the mind will recycle the problem over and over without coming up with an effective resolution. While you may be dealing with only a few problems, the constant mental repetition will cause you to feel like you are dealing with a thousand problems. To complicate matters, we then tend to become even more mentally overwhelmed because we begin to judge ourselves for even having the emotions.

Our feelings are an essential aspect of our human experience. Emotions are the barometer that measures the “distance” between the quality of life we really want to live vs. the experiences we are actually having. For example, if we are attracting a lot of abusive people into our relationships and we want to experience a loving relationship, the emotions we feel will be very painful. Another example is that we may be longing for abundance, yet our actual experiences are indicative of lack. Again, our feelings will register the discrepancy between what we really desire vs. what we are physically experiencing.

You have the power to expand your present life experiences to match with the quality of life you choose to live. In next weeks’s blog, Part Two, we will discuss how to constructively express your negative feelings rather than avoid them. We will also review how you can develop the perceptions that will guide you to the actual experience of living the quality of life you choose.

A portion of this message is an excerpt from the book, The Power of Oneness, Live the Life You Choose. To learn more about how you can align your life with spiritual truth, order the book at http://www.thepowerofoneness.com/products/

I have been going thru some things…the death of my Mother, an argument w my half sister that essentially ended our relationship, the loss of ALL of my friends because I dared to call them out on not being there for me when mom passed, amon with a severe spine issue and then surgery. And yeah this all sounds good…but it is so difficult to look at the bright side. My anger is consuming me and putting me into a deep depression. I don’t know how to shake it and get my mojo back.

Dear Tammy: First of all, my condolences to you on the loss of your mother. No matter what our relationship has been with our mothers, a mother represents a cornerstone in the foundation of our lives; so when we lose our mother, our emotional security gets rocked to the core. It’s kind of like an emotional earthquake that ripples out and creates lots of waves of aftershock that affect many relationships. It sounds like you were the major caregiver which can be physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausting. You had to watch your mother suffer, then you had to deal with the grief of her death, followed by the realization that the people you had hoped would be there for you didn’t “show up” in ways that you had hoped for. No platitudes here – you have a right to feel angry, sad, resentful, and heartbroken. And that is the point to this blog – how can you possibly “look on the bright side” until you honor all these feelings that you have. Your heart can’t heal until you express your feelings. You may want to start by adjusting your mind from judging yourself to accepting however you are feeling. Ask yourself: what do you need to get your feelings out? Cry, scream (privately), hit some pillows, talk with an understanding friend, seek counseling, cry some more. However you feel, it’s OK. It is very painful to get all these feelings out, but it is infinitely more painful to stuff them. Above all, be kind and compassionate with yourself. You WILL get through this period of grief and, most likely, find yourself coming out on the other side surrounded by a whole new group of friends who truly understand you.
Love and Light, Sandra

I have repressed my emotions for as long as I have been on this planet. Abuse and neglect my childhood reality as I was forced to become caregiver to a mentally ill mother at 8 years old by a legal system that was gullible and ignorant to the signs of such a situation. Safety ment not being noticed and any expression of emotion was met with violence and torment. This continued in the realationships I had as a youth then into my marriages and adulthood. I chose caregiving as a career and served youth with disabilities for ten years convinced that understanding mental illness eould empower me and make the pain go away. I was so wrong. At 28 I hemmoraged after the birth of my third child and was diagnosed with crohns disease, followed up with depression and anxiety. In 06 my husband had an affair with my supervisor, my ability to work and maintain health became impossible and I have spent the last eight years in social isolation, emotional paralysis and poverty in every since of the word. Only afew months ago did I understand why and am desperatly trying to release 40 years of pain..yours is the first site that offered relief and gave me tools that worked immediately. .I don’t know if it all will keep working but would love more tools as I cant afford your book just yet. Thank you though for the start!

I lost all 4 grandparents, my dad, my 23 yo son to cancer 2 years 2 months and 4 days ago and my 49 yo brother just passed in Nov. I have bipolar type 2. I have a psychiatrist that finally found the right meds for me. I feel great and have been stable for more then 2 months now. I learned to stay in today. I do that sometimes hour by hour or minute by minute. I am now a very positive woman. I feel less stressed, even though live is stressful. I also moved in the beginning of the month. I take care of my mom who lives with me. That is very hard on me because she is 75 and set in her ways. She gets mean at times. When I take her to the store, we literately hold the line up for at least 20 minutes every single time we’re there. She misplaces her money, credit cards and everything else. Her new trick is falling asleep with a lit cigarette. Yes, I know scary!! She also doesn’t take her meds properly. That frustrates me because, I am a very organized person. I don’t know how many times I put her meds in a weekly med container. She constantly puts me down. However, I learned to say to her in a calm but firm voice (mom I love you, I respect you but I have to disagree.) I say it every time she says something I don’t like or is hurtful to me. I read a lot of positive information on the computer. I have a lot of good stuff on my FB page. I belong to a lot of groups on Fb also. I realized that by helping others I am also helping myself.

Dear Jodie: Wow! What an inspiring example you are in how you are conducting your life. It sounds like you have learned that rare art of living “in the center of the storm” without getting caught up in everyone else’s dramas. Any one of the events you mentioned (the death of your 23-year old son, the death of 5 other immediate family members, taking in your mother) and dealing with your own bi-polar condition would traumatize most people. The way you are able to disagree with your mother in such a respectful way while standing in your own truth is truly a mark of a highly emotionally and spiritually evolved person. Whatever you are doing to support yourself – IT IS WORKING! Thank you for sharing your very inspirational message.
Love and Light, Sandra

Dear Bobbye: Your life story is a testimony to the extraordinary power of the soul to survive tremendous abuse. As you are experiencing, first hand, healing our lives evolves through stages. Your first major stage of healing came when you had the courage to step out of yourself and see life from the other person’s point of view by educating yourself to understand mental illness and becoming a caregiver. This was not a “mistake,” it was a vital part of your healing. You have now graduated to the stage of focusing on being a loving caregiver to yourself. Our thoughts create our reality, so I sense that you are punishing yourself through social isolation, withholding your feelings, and living in poverty. You can begin by forgiving yourself – not for what you did “wrong,” but for all of the pain and suffering that you are attracting into your life. It is time for YOU to heal, at a soul level, so be your own best friend. I am honored that you are choosing to use this site to help you with your healing and that you are practicing the exercises in this blog. And, yes, they really DO work; and, since Spirit knows no limits, you have the capability to heal at lightening speed, no matter how long you have been suffering. You ask if there are any other exercises that I can suggest. I am trusting my intuition, and what comes to me is to suggest that you sit in silence and bathe yourself in every color of the rainbow. Colors are energetic frequencies that have the capacity to transcend words and 3D limitations. You may enjoy listening to a forgiveness meditation with colors that I recorded, which can be downloaded from my website. Just go to the top of this page, click on “Products,” and you will see it. Another suggestion I have is for you to Google EFT (stands for emotional freedom technique), which is a highly effective way to clear acupressure points that are holding in emotional blocks. Many sites demonstrate exactly how to do this. It is free, and you can do it in the privacy of your home. Congratulations, Bobbye – you are on your way to progressing in your spiritual journey!
Love and Light, Sandra